


Karkat Vantas vs. Genetics

by voodoogirl360



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 02:46:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1671815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoogirl360/pseuds/voodoogirl360
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The trials and tribulations of Karkat Vantas as he deals with the ramifications of an ectobiology accident, which leaves him with shiny new lime-green blood, a fuckton of powers he has no idea how to use, and the most annoying moirail in the history of paradox space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Karkat Vantas vs. Genetics

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you’re almost positive your day cannot get any worse.

It all started when your motley crew came to the decision that everyone was starving (which you admittedly agreed with, seeing as the only thing you’d eaten for several days was your words, in many a painful contortion). The first solution that had come to mind was naturally to break into some of the many canned goods stored on the meteor for this very purpose.

What your brilliant contingency plan had failed to take into account was the arrival of the Mayor, who had promptly confiscated anything remotely cylindrical as soon as he had recovered sufficiently to move. Being the capable leader you are, you took this unfortunate development in stride and nominated Rose and Kanaya to negotiate with the strange carapacian. It was a brilliant plan, with much forethought and expert diplomats on the job.

It failed utterly, of course.

Undaunted, you attempted to sneak a few cans while the Mayor slept (at least until you found out carapacians don’t really sleep so much as close their eyes and focus on their surroundings even more intensely than usual), then to beg on your knees (you’re beginning to wonder if they can understand English), then to flop onto the floor and sigh at the hopelessness of your predicament (the only plan to go off without a hitch; whoop-de-fucking-doo). Eventually, Dave of all people came up with the idea of searching the bowels of the meteor for an alchemiter and playing around with it until some sort of positive result was achieved. The group came to a grudging consensus, and you tagged along to ensure the Knight of Jaw-Dropping Ineptifuckery didn’t accidentally blow up the meteor.

Which brings you to your current predicament, i.e. being stuck with literally the most annoying person in the incipisphere while you search for the metaphorical needle in a giant electrical haystack.

You sigh in frustration as you blow the dust off of yet another dusty console, then wince as you hear a loud crash, some electrical sparking, and a soft “fuck”. You growl, and accidentally crack the screen of the machine you’d been inspecting.

“Tell me, Strider,” you say, turning slowly. “What the fuck did you do this time, and why shouldn’t I strangle you for being the most inept being ever to have lived?”

The sight that meets your eyes is not entirely unexpected, but still cringe-worthy. Dave stands next to a smoking pile of what probably used to be some sort of machine at some point in its short, miserable lifetime, but is now a heap of unrecognizable rubble. He grins.

“Can’t help it, Vantas. All these machines lying around, softly whispering their siren song into my willing ears, dude’s gotta try a few, yeah?”

“Not if ‘trying’ means making everything you touch explode from the shame of having been associated with you. Need I remind you that we actually have a job other than fucking around with ectoshit all day? For all we know, your latest victim might have been the exact fucking machine we’re looking for!” You throw your hands up in frustration. “Just please stop being such an idiot for five minutes and actually help me look!”

“Cool your tits, Karkles. I’ll try to tear myself away from my epic quest if you’ll agree to get some tampons in the morning.”

“Don’t call me Karkles,” you hiss, but turn back to the machine you were inspecting previously, momentarily satisfied.

That satisfaction lasts for about 30 seconds.

You whip around as you hear a small ‘beep’ to find Dave summarily ignoring your request and watching with interest as an innocuous-looking machine powers up slowly with a low whirring noise. You recognize that sound from your days as Captain ‘Frogfinder’ Maryam’s less-than-willing assistant. It’s the sound of a containment field powering up, and, judging from his position, about to capture Dave like just another hapless amphibian.

You don’t think – there’s no time to. You rush forwards, shouting as you barrel towards him. Dave has barely enough time to look around before the whir reaches a critical whine, you slam into him, and everything goes green.

You come to a short while later only to be greeted with the unpleasant sensation of being completely isolated from your limbs and a soothing soundtrack of Dave Strider’s Panicked Ramblings, Platinum Edition. You groan weakly, and hear hurried footsteps. Your rather limited field of vision is filled with Dave’s worried expression. You’re half tempted to make some sarcastic comment about how you didn’t think he was capable of such vivid emotions, but now’s really not the time, and you don’t get the chance to say anything before he’s at it again, shooting off a rapid-fire series of relieved metaphors and outlandish theories and questions; holy shit Vantas you OK what is that what the fuck did I do shit shit shit I melted your brain didn’t I your brain is now pungent guacamole simmering gently in its small very angry oven fuck this is not the time for ironic metaphors Strider speak to me Karkat what did I do –

“Calm your shit, Strider, I’m fine,” you say, and he finally stops, thank fuck. “It’s just a containment field for the rowdier frogs. Didn’t you ever use one of these during your daring escapades with Harley?”

“Not really,” he replies, slightly calmer. “I’m not exactly a rocket scientist, y’know. Mainly left the fiddly shit to Jade.” His brow furrows again. “You’re sure this isn’t some freaky alien mutation ray-thingy?”

“Pretty fucking sure.” You try unsuccessfully to massage your temples in frustration before remembering, oh yeah, you’re in an immobilizing force field, that is a thing that’s happening. “Like I said before, it’s just a containment field, which can be deactivated if you will calm the fuck down and listen to me.” He nods.

“You got it. I am calming the fuck down, Corporal Vantas, sir. Chill as ice over here in Strider Central. ‘slike I got a motherfucking polar bear all nestled up in my chest cavity, I am so chill.”

“…Great.” He’s not really calm, you can hear it in his voice, but hey, he’s trying, gotta give him some credit.

“OK, on the control panel you should see a big, round, very obvious button. I want you walk over to the machine and press that button, and only that button. Do you think you’re capable of doing that?”

“I’ll try not to get distracted by anything shiny,” he snarks back, but walks over nonetheless to the array of buttons. You wait impatiently and think reassuring thoughts to yourself. He’s not going to mess up, there’s no possible way he could mess up –

You feel a wave of pain hit you like a thousand angry hoofbeasts using you for a punching bag.

Yeah, there was pretty much no way he wasn’t going to mess up.

You’ve felt pain before, on various levels. There was the time you let yourself get careless and nearly cut your damn hand off while practicing your sickle technique – that had been short and sharp, more painful in the moment than in the panicked minutes after. Then, the time Feferi had overestimated your breath-holding abilities on LODAG; a slow, burning death that had encompassed all five senses. There was so much more besides that, so much you’d begun to feel as if you’d experienced every type of pain imaginable. This is completely different.

This feels as if your very existence is being ripped away.

The pain washes over you like a never-ending ocean, almost relaxing in a way. You can hear the sound of someone screaming from what seems like a very long way off and you think blearily, _Can whoever the fuck that is please shut up, some of us are trying to die over here, thanks,_ before realizing that that’s you.

The agony reaches its apex, and you sink deep beneath the surface of consciousness, letting blackness overtake you.

You wake somewhat reluctantly, as your entire body feels like it’s just been run through a pressure washer and then gratuitously scrubbed by a hundred brush-wielding imps. Dave is slapping you repeatedly, which doesn’t help matters. You attempt to return the favor, but your arms have decided to give exactly zero shits and become the equivalent of particularly well-cooked spaghetti. You settle for groaning loudly, because that’s really the only thing you can do right now without feeling like you’re going to black out again. At least he stops slapping you.

“Yo, Earth to Karkat. Speak to me, my sweet. Give me some sign you’re alive.”

“Nnnnagh,” you reply elegantly.

“Good enough,” he decides, abruptly hoisting you upwards (ow, fuck, your everything) and balancing you precariously with one arm draped limply over the nap of his neck. “Think you can handle standing up, my delicate peach blossom?”

“Fuck every single aspect of you in acute, horrific detail, Strider, for managing to fumble pressing a goddamn button so horribly,” you growl, and weakly push away from him, legs wobbling slightly but holding firm for now. “You’d probably drop me down a flight of stairs if I let you help me. Besides, I’m fine, just…in a lot of fucking pain.” You totter over to the inert remains of the decrepit machine, which appears to have shorted out from the sheer amount of power needed to do whatever it did, and critically examine the slightly singed control panel.

“Which button did you press, anyways? I want to make sure I’m not going to mutate into some ungodly batrachialternian monstrosity or something like that.”

“Holy shit, could that even happen?” Dave asks, seeming somewhat intrigued by the possibility.

“The button, Strider, focus.”

“Right, yeah, calm your mutated tits, kay?” He points to a button on the control panel that is at least 5 inches away from the button you told him to press. “This motherfucker here.” You resist with great difficulty the urge to facepalm, as that would probably hurt about as much as every other jerky movement you've made (or attempted to make). Honestly, at this point existing hurts, which isn’t helped by the migraine you can feel coming on, likely caused by the fumes of idiocy wafting off of your oh-so- helpful cohort.

“All right, luckily for the continued existence of your human bulge, you didn’t hit anything too seriously damaging,” you say after a moment’s thought, feeling very much relieved. “Of course, any and all genetic imperfections I might once have had are now gone forever, but considering what would have happened if your clumsy digit had slipped one button to the left, I got off pretty fucking easy.”

Dave looks at you with an air of morbid curiosity. “What would’ve happened?”

“You’ve seen the mutated carapacians in tanks around the meteor?”

Dave looks confused for a moment, before realizing.

“…oh.”

“Yes, _fucking oh_.” You can feel yourself getting angry at him all over again. “Do you realize now exactly how fiddly and dangerous messing with these things are? How close I came to becoming some horrendous monster? There wasn’t even a guarantee that I would have survived, either; my body could have rejected the mutation, causing me to die. There is a reason these were shut down, Dave, and you just found it out by trapping your foraging partner in a holding field and accidentally altering my fucking genetic code!”

You stop for a moment, panting heavily and staring at him with purest platonic loathing. Before you can launch into the second phase of your tirade, though, you abruptly feel a wave of dizziness wash over you and you find yourself crashing to the ground once more. Dave swoops over worriedly and grabs you in the same humiliating hold he’d held you in previously. You make a valiant effort to break free, but your traitorous muscles are too sore to have much of an effect on Dave’s firm grip.

“Get off of me, you nookwhiffing son of an infantile hopbeast fucker, I’m fine,” you snarl weakly.

“Admit it, Karkitten, you’re gonna need my help whether you like it or not as long as you feel like collapsing every time someone breathes on you,” he chuckles. “C’mon, let’s get you to your weird alien slime bed thing so you can rest your ickle head.”

“Fuck off, Strider,” you mutter, but limp along with him anyways.

Somehow, after what feels like hours of near-misses with stairs and misunderstood directions, the two of you make your ponderous way back to the main room. You sigh in relief when you see the transportalizer, thinking fondly of your nice, quiet, Dave-free room. Dave pauses suddenly, eyeing the transportalizer critically.

“What now?” you grumble.

“Don’t think the both of us’re gonna fit.” He carefully begins disentangling himself from you, and the wobbly feeling returns with a vengeance. “Can you stand?”

You give him the best deadpan glare you can manage.

“I’m gonna take that as a yes,” he decides, and pushes you towards the transportalizer. You stumble forwards with a cry of pain and indignation, and fall face first onto the platform, which activates less than a second later, thankfully not bisecting you but still feeling really weird and tasting somewhat like chlorine and burnt sugar. You don’t even bother getting up when the sensation subsides, preferring to lie in a self-pitying heap and silently wishing the machine had just killed you and been done with it. Your cunning plan is foiled, however, when voices and footsteps converge upon you. Someone gently picks you up and carries you over to one of the many couches the group alchemized in an effort to make the room seem more welcoming (probably Kanaya, given her freakish rainbow drinker strength). Your suspicions are confirmed a moment later as you see her face when she carefully sets you down and transitions almost instantaneously into mother cluckbeast mode.

“Karkat, are you all right?” she asks worriedly, looking you over for any sign of major injury.

“I’m fine, don’t worry,” you reassure her. “Strider decided it would be an absolutely fan-fucking-tastic idea to mess with the ectomachines lying around the storeroom, and to the utter surprise of no one, I got caught in the crossfire.” This does not seem to ease her fretting, so you continue, “Hey, it’s fine, he just zapped away my genetic imperfections. The only throbbing tumor to be found here is the pulsating red globe of my self-loathing.”

This seems to calm her down a bit, but before she can say anything more, the transportalizer fizzes again, and Dave enters, rushing over.

“Shit, Karkles, you ok? That was meant to be the gentlest of bro taps, I swear.” He looks nearly as worried as Kanaya. You’re almost touched.

“Not as long as your asshole face is in the room, no,” you reply drily, and sit up with some effort. You still ache all over, and your migraine’s been growing steadily worse almost from the moment you regained consciousness.

“Well, at the very least his sharp tongue remains undamaged,” Rose’s equally dry voice sounds from behind Kanaya, where she and Terezi are standing, haven been crowded out of the front by the more worried parties. You roll your eyes in her direction, and Terezi cackles in amusement. It’s harsh and grating, as usual, and really not the greatest thing to be hearing in your current state. You wince a little instinctively, and instantly Kanaya’s fussing over you again. You push her off, and stand up unsteadily.

“I’m fine, holy shit, stop worrying. I am also, however, really fucking tired and sore all over, so I’m going to get in my ‘coon and sleep the sleep of the dead. Strider can explain what went down, and if you really can’t restrain yourselves from fawning over me like a sad unloved baby chirpbeast in the snow, you can stop by later, I guess.” Kanaya begins to protest, but you ignore her, focusing on making it to the transportalizer without collapsing into a small, exhausted heap.

It’s only when you’ve made it back to your respiteblock that you admit to yourself that no, you really aren’t fine. You slump against the wall and slide down until you’re sitting limply, panting heavily from the exertion of walking more than a couple steps without passing out. Your vision is blurred, with green spots dancing in front of your eyes as if mocking your painfully sore limbs, and your migraine is worse than ever.

You hiss in pain and clench your hands, claws digging into your palms, as a fresh wave of agony makes your thinkpan feel like it’s boiling inside your skull. You stagger to your feet once more, struck with a sudden sense of urgency. You can’t help feeling like the sheer amount of pain you’re experiencing is a fairly good indicator that something is very, very wrong with you. You resolve to strangle Strider so thoroughly that every last puff of air is choked from his smug, self-assured lungs when this is over, and make a vague, grabby gesture towards the closest object to begin creating a pile to ride this out on, a discarded captchalogue card from when you still had that gogforsaken Encryption modus which you’ve mainly been using as a very large paperweight.

It rockets away from you, enveloped in a wildly sparking green aura, and smashes into the wall hard enough to stick there, trapped in the huge dent created by its impact. You stare dumbly for a moment, before slowly looking down at your hand, terrified of what you’re going to see.

Your veins are throbbing hard, looking like they’re about to burst. They glow a bright neon green, and every few seconds crackle ominously, enveloping your hand in a sputtering lime aura that grows increasingly strong the more you stare at it. It tingles unpleasantly, and feels so utterly alien that you scrabble backwards in a futile attempt to get as far away as possible from it. This results in your carefully stacked pile of romantic novels exploding outwards, books ricocheting off the walls. You begin to hyperventilate slightly, and your environment responds accordingly. The flying books, along with several other miscellaneous objects, are enveloped in green once more and whirl wildly around the room in an ever-growing maelstrom centered on your panicked form.

A wild, horrible thought strikes you.

As the grudging best friend to an irritable psionic, you know a bit more than the average troll about psionic overloads. They’re intense, uncontrollable surges of psionic energy that can be triggered after prolonged disuse of your abilities or a sudden spike in power, like that given by mind honey. They’re also something you really don’t want to be around when they happen, as anything and everything in the vicinity of the psionic is caught in their telekinetic field and tossed about in random directions. You nearly got gutted by one of Sollux’s shitty throwing stars the first time you experienced one.

As you slowly rise up off the ground, becoming aware of a low electric hum that rises in pitch ominously, you realize that this is unmistakably, impossibly, a psionic overload, and, even more impossibly, _you_ are the one causing it.

Before you can consider the ramifications of this realization, though, the rhythmic pounding in your head reaches a crescendo, the power that’s been building inside you like a pressure cooker bursts forth all at once, and your world goes utterly green, in a rather unpleasant moment of deja vu.

~~~~

When you awaken from the third period of prolonged unconsciousness you’ve experienced that day, groaning and feeling even more exhausted than before, you realize several things all at once. Firstly, your accursed migraine is finally gone, about which you are definitely not complaining. Secondly, your room is a fucking mess. Papers and books are strewn about everywhere, there are streaks of spoor slime all over the walls, and you don’t want to think about the tattered remains of your clothing. Thirdly, the entire room has an odd, almost imperceptible greenish tint to it no matter where you look. You try blinking a couple times in an attempt to clear your eyes, but your vision remains unchanged, which worries you slightly. This is a minor problem in your opinion, however, when compared to the realization just now hitting you in full force that, _holy shit_ , you just had a psionic overload.

_Why_ did you just have a psionic overload?

Are you just an incredibly late-blooming psionic? That’s ridiculously unlikely, though; nearly all trolls manifest whatever psionic powers they have by the 3-sweep mark, and those powers that are obtained after that time are usually fairly weak in nature. You are fairly fucking certain that your little episode did not fit into the category of ‘weak’.

What, then? Could it have something to do with the ectobiology machine Strider zapped you with? But that was just a genetic purification, not something as drastic as doling out a whole new power set – unless.

“No fucking way,” you breathe, and dash to your ablution chamber, which is thankfully relatively undamaged. You rummage through the drawers, hunting for a razor, when something catches your eye in the mirror, and you stare, fingers still blindly rifling through the drawer.

The pupil of your eye is completely gone, as is the iris and the scelera. If they are still there, then they are utterly washed out by the bright neon green that covers your eyeballs uniformly, glowing softly. They look an awful lot like Sollux’s freaky red/blue combo, actually, and you wonder briefly if he, too, had normal eyes before he became a psionic.

There’s a sharp pain suddenly as the long-sought-after razor nicks the tip of a finger. You curse softly, and then remember why you were hunting for one in the first place, and gently, with an almost reverential air, hold your hand out in front of you and gaze at the color of the blood dribbling out of the cut.

It is, unsurprisingly at this point if you’re being entirely honest with yourself, a uniform lime green, without a trace of bright candy red.

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and as of today, you are now the first and only limeblood to have existed for nearly 500 sweeps.

As you rub a drop of the blood between your fingers and desperately try to keep yourself from panicking all over again, you are absolutely positive that your day has gotten much, much worse.

**Author's Note:**

> Today I learned that it is very, very hard to come up with synonyms for 'lime green'.
> 
> Hope you guys enjoyed this! This is almost definitely going to be a multi-chapter fic. Kudos and comments are appreciated as always!


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